In the Lake of the Woods: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

As a child, John loved to perform magic tricks: silk scarves, a disappearing penny, etc. While these are only tricks, not real magic, John the child liked to pretend that the tricks are real. At fourteen, John’s father dies, and in his mind he performs magic tricks that restore his father to life.

John meets Kathy in 1966, when he’s a senior at the University of Minnesota, and Kathy is a freshman. John is desperate to make Kathy love him. He thinks of his father’s death, and worries to Kathy that things could go wrong between them. Shortly after they begin dating, John begins to spy on Kathy when she thinks she’s on her own. He learns that she smokes, and what she eats for breakfast. He thinks that he loves Kathy best when he’s spying on her, and the spying comes naturally to him. John knows that spying is wrong, but he blames Kathy for bringing the desire to spy out in him.

John continues spying on Kathy: he watched when she buys his birthday present, and when she buys her first diaphragm. Kathy says that it’s weird how well he knows her. Nevertheless, they plan to get married and live in Minneapolis. John plans to go to law school, then run for lieutenant governor of the state of Minnesota, followed by Senator. Kathy is impressed, but finds John’s plans cold and unfeeling. She asks John why he wants to go into politics, and he tells her that it’s because he loves Kathy. Even as he promises Kathy that he wants to use politics to do good, John knows that he’s lying. He knows that he enjoys politics because it involves manipulation and deception.

John graduates college in June of 1967, when the Vietnam war is in progress. In nine months, he is in active combat in Vietnam. His challenge during the war, he understands, is to stay sane. He sends letters to Kathy, and she writes him back. While most of their correspondence is cheery, Kathy worries that John is only fighting so that he’ll have an easier time getting elected. John is hurt, although he admits to himself that he sometimes fantasizes about being worshipped by crowds for his military sacrifices. He writes Kathy and tells her that he wishes she’d believe in him.

John isn’t a great soldier, but he’s popular among the other men. He does card tricks for them, which earn him the nickname, “Sorcerer.” Once, a soldier named Weber is fatally shot while John is with him. As Weber dies, he asks John to do his magic.

John’s magic eventually works its way into the military plans of his division, Charlie Company. The soldiers go through mock-rituals before they fight, in which John casts a spell to make them invisible, and tells their fortunes. They are impressed that John never gets injured, even when an explosive lands near him. John encourages this mystique. He writes to Kathy that he’s the company “witch doctor.” He also writes, “They actually believe in this shit.” Kathy warns him to be careful with his tricks—one day, she says, he’ll make her disappear.

John worries that Kathy is growing distant. In a letter she sends him, she describes the fun she’s been having, and he wishes he could spy on her. Meanwhile, men in Charlie Company die, and there’s a general feeling that his magic has worn off. The soldiers aren’t warm to him anymore.

In February, an enemy sniper shoots a soldier named Reinhart; John is with Reinhart when he dies. John feels his body fill with anger, sadness, and evil. As if in a trance, he runs through the forest until he reaches the sniper, who he hits in the cheekbone with his gun. Later the soldiers praise John for finding the sniper so quickly. The soldiers perform their own act of magic: they raise the sniper high into the air with a rope, so that the Vietnamese villagers can see him.

John returns to the United States in 1969. He calls Kathy, but hangs up before she can answer. During a layover between his flight home, he looks at himself in the mirror and addresses himself as Sorcerer. When he’s back in Minneapolis, he goes to the University of Minnesota and waits outside Kathy’s dormitory. He rehearses a speech about loyalty that he’ll deliver to Kathy later, but when he sees her, he notices that she seems quicker and cleverer. This makes him feel uneasy, and he goes to say in a hotel that night.

The night he sees Kathy, John sleeps in a hotel and thinks about his father’s funeral. He remembers wanting to hit everyone with a hammer, including his father. The next day, he returns to Kathy’s dormitory, but can’t resist spying on her as she goes to class and buys food. He feels suspicious that Kathy is seeing another man, but he also wants to forget his own suspicion. Still, he decides, he is the Sorcerer, and he has a gift for magic.

John watches as Kathy leaves her dorm and makes a phone call from a payphone. He waits outside her dormitory all night and into the morning. When Kathy returns and sees him there, she says that she was out, and John smiles and nods. In the end, they get married anyway.

When John and Kathy get married, they promise to be true to one another, and move into an apartment in Minneapolis shortly thereafter. Kathy says it’s scary how much she loves him. John, or “Sorcerer,” as the narrator calls him, thinks to himself that he must guard his secrets, and never reveal the things he’s seen and done.